


You Have The Place Next To My Place

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Random AUs [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Minor Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 16:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: prompt: “We live in adjacent apartments and our bedrooms are on opposite sides of a very thin wall and one night I heard you crying and talked to you through the wall” AU (originally fromcaptanjamestkirk.tumblr.comCaptain America helps the Vet next door.





	You Have The Place Next To My Place

Steve's new neighbour might as well not be there for all that Steve's aware of him. Steve knows there's someone there because he passes the removal guys going down the stairs one afternoon. He sticks his toast in his mouth and helps with a large desk they're struggling with, but then he's on his way out.

He only catches a glimpse of a dark head of hair before he's stuffing the rest of his wholegrain into his mouth and jamming his motorcycle helmet on his head. Time to go!

The moving guys are gone by the time he gets home and he doesn't see the guy again – soft light spills out into the corridor from under the door and there's flickering, as though there's a television set on. There's no noise though, so the volume's either down or he's got headphones in. Or maybe subtitles. Maybe the guy's deaf.

It's no skin off Steve's nose. In fact, Steve sees it as a courtesy – he plans to shower, only because he doesn't want to cover his bedsheets in concrete dust and blood – and then pass out.

Which he proceeds to do.

~

The takeout guy arrives on Saturday night with an armful of bags – Steve opens his door and the smell of the food hits him smack in the face on a wave of warm air as the door sweeps inward. 

Steve's stomach growls from that alone, but Craig hands him every bag and box except one.

“Thanks,” Steve tells him, “money's on the side.”

Craig smiles and reaches in past the doorframe to grab his money off the table by the door.

“Keep the change,” Steve says, without thining, and Craig tucks it into his pocket.

“Thanks, Cap,” he says, “my mom put in the new dumplings; she says to let me know what you think of 'em.”

“Sure thing,” Steve says, turning around to dump the bags on the table. “You want a coffee?”

“Nah, I got another delivery,” Craig says, holding up his remaining bag. “But thanks though.”

Steve nods, gives him a smile, and Craig touches his fingertips to his temple and closes Steve's front door for him.

Steve's walking over to the drawers for cutlery when he hears a knock that's quieter, quiet enough that, Steve realizes, it must be coming from down the corridor.

He sticks his head out just to check, and he's in time to see Craig frown and knock again at the next apartment over. The New Guy.

Craig looks at him, and Steve shrugs. 

“Is he in?” Craig asks, and Steve shakes his head. 

“I don't know,” he says. “I haven't met him – he moved in earlier this week.”

 _“You the guy from Wen's?”_ says a muffled voice that Steve doesn't recognize, just as Craig startles.

“Uh, yeah!” Craig says a moment later. “I got your order-”

 _“Leave it on the ground,”_ Steve's neighbor says through the door, and then there's a soft swishing noise and money appears at Craig's feet. _“Enough?”_

Craig gives Steve a look like _is this guy serious?_ but he picks up the money and counts it.

“Yeah,” he says. “You want any change?”

 _“No,”_ the voice answers, _“Just leave the food on the ground.”_

“Yeah, man, you got it,” Craig says, and he turns away and walks past Steve with a shrug.

“Customer's always right,” he says, and walks on down the corridor.

“Takes all kinds,” Steve answers, and there's a click, a _shuff_ of paper and a bang. 

When he looks back, the bag of food is gone, and there's no sign of the occupant of the next apartment down.

~

Steve has, to put it bluntly, had better nights. And it isn't the culmination of many things, it isn't the last day of a long week – he's been shot.

It could be worse – he could still be bleeding - but he lost a lot of blood in-situ, and he was only allowed home because he promised he'd rest. Not like he has a choice about it either – he heals better when he sleeps, sure, but he's ready to drop the second he gets in.

Thank God they hosed him down at the medical centre. 

Okay, they didn't _hose him down_ per se, but they helped him off with his uniform and helped him clean up enough that he could get into new clothes and get stitches and dressings without stinking up the place. He'll need to shower to get the last of the dirt out from under his fingernails and out of the creases of his knuckles, from behind his ears and all of that, but it can wait. 

Boy howdy, can it wait.

He eases himself out of his clothes and then eases himself into his bed, and the pillows are cool against skin that's hot with healing, the quilt soft against bones still tender from the fight.

He's going to sleep for days, nobody will disturb him because they know his situation, so all he has to do is close his eyes, lie very still, and wait for the relief of sleep to wash over him. 

It takes maybe forty seconds – he feels the world grow blurry, sounds fading, his body becoming heavy-

The thing is, Steve reads a lot of Wikipedia articles in his free time. One thing often leads to another and he's learned all kinds of things in the few years he's been awake in this century – but the relevant thing to Steve while he's trying to sleep off a bullet-wound is Exploding Head Syndrome. 

He's had panic attacks, and he's had sleep paralysis – sleep paralysis was horrendous. There were lots of 'cures' and 'solves' online, but the only one that ever worked for Steve was holding his breath until his body woke him up. Didn't always work, but knowing what it was made it a whole lot less terrifying.

But exploding head syndrome is one that's annoying – he knows what it is but it's still a shock. Wikipedia calls it benign, says that it's loud, imagined noises that occur on the edge of sleep. He hates it – it gets his adrenaline up, makes him hyper-aware even though he knows what it was.

So when his almost-slumber is interrupted by a loud, abrasive yell, it takes him a good few seconds to realize that he actually did hear it. 

He sits up, switches on the light on the nightstand, and turns around to stare at the wall, as though that will help at all. He ducks his head and listens – super-hearing is good for plenty, especially when his adrenalin is already pumping.

He's about to ask it the person needs help, to knock on the wall and use the Captain America voice, but he hears a voice a moment later.

 _"Wow,”_ it says, and Steve recognises the muffled voice – it's definitely the takeout recluse from before, which is good because it means he's not hearing a home-invasion - _“fuck, can't you have one fuckin' night without nightmares?”_

And then Steve can hear movement, footsteps that grow quieter, and a door that closes. There's silence after that and, whoever his neighbor is, Steve thinks as he lies back down, he's got it rough. Steve knows how it feels to come awake at...

Jesus, it's two in the morning?

Well Steve knows that feeling very well, and can only sympathise. He's just glad he didn't get as far as knocking on the wall – he knows from experience that the only thing worse than knowing you scared yourself awake is knowing someone else heard you.

He keeps an ear out, but it doesn't take him long before he's slipping into sleep, and his neighbor doesn't come back to bed before he's out for the night.

~

Steve passes Craig in the hallway one afternoon. He looks back along the corridor and Craig's already collecting his money from the gap under Steve's neighbor's doorway.

~

Steve is making breakfast one morning when something slides underneath his front door. It's a letter addressed to him, and it ends up being from the bank. But he goes out to see whose mailbox it ended up in by mistake, goes out to say thank you. By the time he makes it out into the corridor, he's just in time to see his neighbor's door swing shut. 

~

Steve doesn't see the guy next door, but he hears him sometimes – the walls are thin and Steve's hearing is great. 

He doesn't meet him but he's sometimes in the corridor when Craig shows up – or Rashid from Spice House. Sometimes it's even Rachel from the Pizza Palace.

Steve doesn't know the guy next door, but the guy is quiet and unassuming, and sometimes has a bad night or two.

Steve wonders if he ought to make the guy a cake to welcome him to the building, but by the time he thinks of it, it's been almost two months, and he can't really justify it.

~

It is the evening of the first day of Steve's two days off this cycle of the rota, and he has virtually no plans. He's been for a run today, he might go to the gym tomorrow – he's cooked his own dinner tonight too. He found a nice recipe for chicken satay, which he hasn't been able to get enough of since Natasha persuaded him to eat some at her favourite Thai place.

(Well, _from_ her favourite Thai place, but Steve likes that she understands his need to stay in sometimes.)

But he's going into the bedroom to change out of his cooking shirt – it's the one with the beet and turmeric stains on the front, that he can never wear out in public again because he decided to try and cook in a white t-shirt because he's an idiot - when he hears something.

It takes him a minute or so to figure out – he thinks at first that there's shuffling, maybe a pest in the walls or something. Then he thinks maybe his neighbor is moving things around next door, but there's a sound that makes him stop what he's doing and listen, because it's a sound he knows.

He crosses the bedroom in four strides, and presses his ear to the wall. It doesn't occur to him until afterward that the noises he hears can also be caused by something a little more personal, but that turns out not to matter, because he recognises what he's hearing just as soon as he gets his ear to the wall.

His neighbor isn't breathing properly – it sounds halfway between asthma and an attack of the hiccups, but it isn't until Steve hears a huge, halting rasp of breath inward that he gets it.

“Can you hear me?” he says, before he realizes he's going to say it. “If you can hear me hit the wall twice,” he says, and there's a bit of a pause but two halting thumps follow.

“Good, okay,” Steve says, and great, what next? “Okay, listen, I think you're having a panic attack. If I'm wrong and you're injured and need an ambulance, I need you to smack on the wall real hard on the count of three, just once for 'No.' Okay? One. Two. Three.”

There's no reply, about which Steve is not surprised, but there's no smack on the wall either.

“Okay,” Steve says, fear abating a little, “okay, listen, I have a friend who works as a therapist, and he knows breathing exercises. I want you to breathe with me, okay?”

Still no reply. Steve is still not surprised.

But he's about to start explaining when two thumps shake the wall, and he smiles despite the situation.

“That's great,” he says, “you're doin' great, okay - this is called 'Square Breathing,'“ he says. “We're gonna breathe in for the count of four, hold it for the count of four, breathe out through pursed lips for the count of four and then wait for the count of four. I'm going to do it with you and I'm gonna tap the wall so that you can keep count, okay?”

His neighbor makes a pained, ugly noise, and Steve wishes he could crawl through the plasterboard just so the guy's not alone.

“I know, buddy, and you're gonna feel like an idiot but it works on my panic attacks, it'll work on yours. Ready?”

Two thumps, closer together this time, and Steve nods, settles down against the wall.

“All right, here we go: In,” Steve says, and knocks the wall - one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand. “Hold.” And he knocks the wall again - one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand. “Out,” and he makes sure the hiss of air between his pursed lips is loud so as to be audible over the next set of thumps, “and wait,” and he taps the wall.

It takes another two repetitions before the gulping, gasping sobs on the other side of the wall subside enough that Steve can hear the guy finally taking shaking breaths according to his thumping on the wall. 

“In,” he says, and he softens his voice now, doesn't need to be quite so loud or commanding. “Good, hold.” And the guy's hiccups are audible but they don't interrupt his breathing quite so much. “Out,” Steve says, more sort of tapping the wall now, and he can hear the pitch of the guy's breathing - definitely pursing his lips, which is pretty good. 

After another few minutes, Steve can hear the guy breathing properly, if a little heavily - which is perfectly understandable given how long it took him to get the amount of oxygen he was meant to have - but it's still a little difficult to forget the apprehension he first felt when he heard someone having a panic attack on the other side of a wall. 

Steve stops tapping and says,

“I think you're breathin' okay now, right?”

There are two sharp taps on the wall to answer his question, and he smiles, looks down at his knees. 

He's about to say something else when there's a rapid series of taps and it clicks into place without any effort at all.

Officer's Call.

“I'm a Captain,” he says. “You?”

More knocks, and Steve smiles. First Sergeant's Call. 

“Well how about this,” he says, and then he turns around and knocks the Mess Call against their shared wall. “You like Malaysian?”

There is a long silence, followed by a muffled, stuffy-nosed,

 _“Are you serious?”_

Steve doesn't think he was meant to hear it, but he huffs a laugh anyway.

“I'm making chicken satay. Do I bring it to you or are you coming to me?”

The silence that follows rings in Steve's ears, so he makes an executive decision.

“I'll bring it over in five,” he says.

~

Steve is carrying old Wen's tupperware boxes full of his own chicken satay, and he's just standing in front of the Sergeant's door, fumbling his keys into his pocket when he realizes that maybe the Sergeant next door doesn't think Steve is coming over. Maybe he just thinks Steve is bringing him food and then leaving - like Craig and the others do.

He has time to think about it and feel the panic rising before the door unlocks and opens and Steve...

Steve really shouldn't feel the way he does about the guy standing in front of him. 

“Uh,” he says, “Sergeant?”

“Captain,” the guy answers, and Steve notices a lot of things about him at once.

He's just slightly shorter than Steve is but he looks too thin, somehow transparent. His hair is long and dark and probably in need to of a wash but he'll be able to make it a couple more days before it's a necessity. He has dark circles under pale blue eyes, wears dark colors, head down,and is sorely in need of a shave, but he's also absolutely gorgeous.

“Uh,” he says again, and the Sergeant takes a step back.

It's only because Steve has made the gesture so many times - arm sweeping out to invite someone through his front door - that he notices something off about it, and that that draws his eye.

The Sergeant is missing an arm, up to his elbow at least.

“Where do you want these?” Steve asks.

“Table,” the Sergeant answers. “James.”

“Steve,” Steve answers. 

He puts the tupperware on the table, which is good because it was starting to get a little hot, and he turns back to look at James.

The apartment is almost empty, he notices, as there's barely any furniture on his periphery. James looks dwarfed by the place, and Steve knows all too well how that feels. 

“Sit down,” James rasps amicably, and Steve shakes his head.

“Where's your plates?” he asks, and James cocks his head and gives him a look.

“Over the toaster,” he says, and Steve goes over while James takes a seat.

Steve opens the cupboard over the toaster to find that the plates are indeed therein. Both of them. There's not much, and there's only two of everything, all in the same place.

Steve grabs the two glasses and the two plates, as well as the two sets of cutlery. He leaves the two cereal bowls but says nothing about how little crockery there is. It isn't nice to pry, and the only thing a full set of crockery and cutlery have ever done for Steve is allow him to put off doing the dishes until the sink is completely full.

He goes to the table and sits opposite James, says grace silently and crosses himself and looks up to find James watching him, the corner of his mouth twitched up.

“Sorry,” he says, feeling the blush rise in his cheeks, and James shakes his head.

“It's nice,” he says. 

Steve doesn't know what to say to that, so he just smiles - albeit a little tightly - and pops the lids off the tupperware.

“Marks for presentation,” he says, and tips the first one onto James' plate and the second onto his own. “Ta-daa.”

“I'd clap, but y'know,” James says, and Steve doesn't catch up for a second, until there's actual food in his actual mouth.

“Oh my God,” he says around his mouthful, trying not to choke, and then James snorts.

They eat in companionable silence for a good portion of the meal, but James is looking Steve up and down, and Steve can tell.

“Go on,” he says. “This is your house, ask away.”

James looks down at his meal, looking a little ashamed, but he looks up again a moment later.

“Still active?” he says, and Steve rolls his shoulder in a shrug.

“In a manner of speaking,” he says. “I was SpecOps before, and I'm pretty much just emergency services. We see a lot of shit but at least now I'm mainly my own CO.”

James considers this for a few moments and then he nods.

“Classified SpecOps?” he says, and Steve smiles apologetically. 

“Pretty much,” he says. “I'm on-call a lot though so...don't worry about calling or banging on the wall if you need someone to talk to. I'm usually either awake or not here.”

“Thanks,” James snorts.

He takes another mouthful, and Steve cocks his head.

“You know, I hear the television on at night sometimes,” he says. “Do you always sleep during the day?”

James chews more and more slowly until he swallows hard, and then he looks away.

“Harder to wake up the neighbours if there aren't any around when you freak out,” he answers, and Steve nods, looks down at his food.

They've spent another few minutes in silence when James speaks again.

“You want to know what happened to my arm?” he says, and Steve puts down his fork and looks at the empty space where James' left forearm would be.

“Honestly?” he says, and then finds James' gaze with his own again. “Yes. But I don't want you to tell me unless you want to tell me.”

James blinks at him.

“What if I don't?” he says, and Steve picks up his fork and drops James' gaze again.

“You brought it up,” he says. “It's not really any of my business.”

Steve doesn't dare look up for a long time after that, in case he's upset James with his answer. But James doesn't seem distressed or upset – after a long few moments, he begins to eat again, Steve can hear the cutlery on crockery.

“Where'd you learn to cook?” he says through a mouthful.

“My therapist friend recommended it. Help get me back into the everyday, teach me a valuable skill and give me something enjoyable and time-consuming to focus on. I go for a run every morning, too. As for what I cook, I have another friend who likes to recommend things.”

“Did they recommend satay?” James asks.

“She did,” Steve answers, giving James the information he hasn't asked for.

“I was SpecOps too,” James says. “Most of mine was classified, but this?”

He lifts the stump and looks at place where his sleeve is stuffed up the inside of itself. For a moment, Steve I surprised that it can move, and then he feels like an idiot. James is moving it. It is still James' arm, still attached, the remaining part is still functional. Just because the forearm is gone does not mean the rest is paralysed.

“This was an ambush – next guy across from me was killed. And while I was busy bleeding out on the ground, I kept blabbering about how I couldn't find my sister's picture. That's what I wake up panicking about. Pretty dumb, huh?”

It's self deprecating, and James holds Steve's gaze as though he's daring Steve to laugh.

“When I thought I was dying,” Steve says, “I had my girl's picture in my Da's compass, and all I could think about when I started drowning was how I wished I could have saved the compass from the water. Can you imagine?”

James looks a little less defensive as he nods.

“Weird isn't it?” he says, and Steve nods too.

“Not exactly your life flashing before your eyes,” he says. 

“So why are you still in?” James asks. “I mean, I got discharged, what's a one-armed wonder gonna do for the US Army, but you?”

“What else am I gonna do?” Steve asks.

James shrugs.

“Chef?” he suggests, and Steve laughs out of surprise more than anything else. “You be a chef and I'll learn to juggle.”

“Oh, God,” Steve chuckles.

When they're finished eating, Steve does the dishes, because he might be lazy as all get out in his own apartment but his mother taught him manners to use in someone else's.

He's just drying the plates when James leans against the kitchen counter and says, 

“So how d'you feel about DADT?”

~

Contact, Sam says, is a lot like the body's other appetites. Food. Sleep. Whisper it - sex. And while sex and comfort are not like the others - they can be ignored for longer, avoided altogether - they're still important. Sam says that just plain contact can often be more important than sex, and Steve is inclined to believe him. 

When Sam first caught Steve having a panic attack-

 _'Not_ caught,' says Sam's voice in his head, ' _can't_ catch _you if you ain't doin' nothing wrong._ '

When Sam found Steve having a panic attack the first time, he sat with him and put Steve's hand on his chest, put his hand on Steve's chest, and they square-breathed together until it was over. 

Then, because Sam is a wonderful human being, Sam hugged him, and Steve nearly wept. 

Sam was warm and strong and held onto him for five whole minutes because Steve didn't want to let go, and Steve just hooked his chin over Sam's shoulder and closed his eyes and shook against him. Sam's arms were strong around him, hands splayed on Steve's back and on the back of his head, and Steve felt such relief, such a sudden release of tension, so strongly that it startled him. 

Sam had been the first person to hug him in this century, and Steve hadn't realized how much he'd felt like he was drowning until that moment.

It's what drives him to ask James.

James looks at him like he's turned purple.

“Forget I asked,” Steve says, hastily looking down, away. 

His hand goes to his back pocket for his keys but James speaks.

“I...” he says, and then nothing, and Steve freezes, looks at him.

James looks kind of sad, kind of uncomfortable, and Steve knows that look because Sam's told him he wears the same one. Sam calls it constipated, but really they both know better.

“ _Do_ you want a hug?” Steve asks again, and James looks at him helplessly, almost desperately. 

Steve doesn't even hesitate - he does exactly the same for James that Sam did for him, squeezes James just a little because he's strong, and sometimes that helps.

James goes limp almost instantly, full weight against Steve, one hand fisted in Steve's tee, the stump of the other arm pressing tightly against him. 

Steve rubs his back a little, too - Sam did it and it helped, so Steve does it.

“Where did you learn this?” James' muffled voice asks the muscle of Steve's shoulder, and Steve fights the urge to press a kiss to James' head the way his mother used to do for him. 

“I told you,” he says, “I got a friend who's a therapist.”

“Mmmf,” James says against his shoulder. “All right, I'll buy it. Hug therapy.”

And Steve doesn't let go. He doesn't have anywhere to be, he doesn't have any objection. 

It feels like he holds James for a long time, but it also feels like they've been there for no time, by the time James pulls back.

“Sorry,” he rasps, and Steve shakes his head.

“Don't worry about it,” he says. “It's mutually beneficial.”

James' lips quirk again.

“Well I guess I'll just have to bang on the wall every time I have a panic attack from now on.”

“Or if you want company,” Steve says. “I mean, y'know. I don't want to overstep-”

“No, it's- It's fine, I don't....I mean, I....”

They look at each other and Steve can feel the similarities between them. The insecurity, the anxiety, the half-stifled fear they'll go too far.

“You wanna come watch TV?” James says.

~

Which is how Steve ends up with James asleep and pressed into his side, at eleven o'clock at night.

James' history is not hard to glean – there are photographs of him in fatigues in the desert, in dress uniform by two people who have similar bone structure, in a suit standing next to a girl who could be his twin. They are so alike that it takes Steve aback.

But he and James are watching How It's Made on mute, so the most that's happening in the room currently is that Steve is watching a machine crimp lengths of metal into chain links while James takes breaths that rasp softly, his body against Steve.

When James show no sign of waking, Steve maneuvers himself away and gets his arms under James' body. He'll put James to bed, and then he'll write James a note, otherwise they'll both be on the couch until morning.

When he lifts James, he does so as gently as possible, ending up with James' left side tucked against his chest, Steve's arms under his back and the back of his knees. He knows where the bedroom is because the apartment is the mirror image of his own, and it's a little disconcerting in a _deja vu_ kind of way, but it's still nothing Steve can't deal with.

Not yelping when he cracks his shin on one of the coffee-table's lethal corners is a little more difficult, but he still manages. He gets all the way into James' bedroom, where the bed is immaculately made and turned down, just like Steve's own.

Fumbling about with the covers wouldn't be much use – it would only wake James – so Steve just sets him down atop the quilts, extracts his arms and- -

He's not expecting the blinding blow to the side of his head. It catches him in the left ear and, for a moment, he's five-foot-four again, reeling in the dark with half his hearing and none of his sight, and then there's a sound like a scream or a roar and there's more pain – his face, and then chest, and then stomach, and he lifts his hands through instinct as the next blow comes for his face, grabbing the wrist of the limb that attacks, instead of crushing the hand.

When he goes to grab the other one, his hand closes on nothing, and there's a rush of air past his face in the wake of something that misses by miles. 

And then silence.

Steve is halfway on the floor with James' right wrist in his left hand, while James stares incredulously at the space where his own left hand would be. They are both of them gasping but it's James who speaks first.

“Shit,” he whispers, eyes glassy, and Steve only holds on until he's sure James knows both where he is and what Steve is doing there.

~

Steve makes them hot chocolate, settles James on the couch again, and goes to drag the quilt off James' bed.

When he returns with it, James is staring dejectedly at the coffee table with the mug warming his hand, and Steve drapes the quilt over his shoulders.

“I'm sorry, Cap,” James whispers, and he sounds as though he thinks this is the worst thing in the world.

“It's okay,” Steve tells him, settling on the couch beside him.

James lifts his head and looks at him, maybe to tell him it isn't – he seems that way inclined – but his face falls again and he puts the mug on the coffee table, reaches out towards Steve's face.

“Jesus,” he says, and Steve doesn't flinch away.

James stops himself before he makes contact, but Steve knows what he's looking at – namely the black eye and split lip.

“You make me dinner and I punch you in the face.”

“Technically, I made _me_ dinner, and technically, I'm pretty sure it was an elbow.”

James groans, but Steve shifts, shoves himself up against the arm of the couch and turns his body.

“Wanna put How It's Made back on?” he says and, wearily, James nods.

~

Steve doesn't consider moving until it's beginning to get light outside, and even then he doesn't really want to leave. Nobody that he knows is willing to do this kind of thing – or, more accurately, he hasn't met anyone whom he trusts enough to do this with.

The boys used to set up camp and jostle each other, used to spend their time on leave in the same place. He knew of a few men who'd even go to brothels together, but people in this century tend to get a little odd around guys who hug hello. It's felt odd to Steve from the get-go – back when macking on a guy could get you arrested, men didn't give a shit about how many men they shared a space with, didn't care about sharing showers or communal latrines, didn't give a hoot where a guy set up or who he set up with, 'cause nobody considered you could be doing anything but being pals side by side.

Now that it's legal for two men to get _married_ , and Steve's head sometimes still spins thinking about it, people keep almost entirely to themselves. It's as though people take the possibility of open homosexuality as a sign that it will affect them. As though, now that men like Steve can do these things, they somehow automatically will without prejudice.

But Steve has his arm around James, and James has been leaning on him, listening to his heart, for a long time now. Steve long ago lost track of whatever it is that's being made - he's been thinking about the conversation they made during and after dinner, and he turns a few of James' phrases over in his mind before he speaks.

“When did you know who I was?” he asks.

“I...don't know,” James answers, his voice reverberating through Steve's chest. “I think it figured it out from some stuff and then just sort of...gradually decided I was right. “

“Hmm,” Steve says.

“Plus you carried me to bed. I ain't huge but I ain't small either.”

Steve has to give him that. Still, traffic is picking up outside, the light's rising, and there are actual birds starting to sing too – they've been here all night, and it's been about five hours since either one of them moved. 

They're still here.

“So you stayed, huh?” James says.

“Presumably you asked me about DADT for a reason,” Steve says eventually, not feeling as bold as the sentence sounds in his head, but he looks down at the top of James' head.

James shifts, looks up at him, and his lips twitch up at the corner again.

“Yeah,” James says. “And you stayed.”

Steve nods slowly. 

“Yeah.”


End file.
